Days at the Morisaki Bookshop
When twenty-five-year-old Takako learns that the boyfriend she assumed she'd marry is engaged to someone else, she falls apart—quitting her job, sleeping for days, and losing all sense of direction. Out of nowhere, her eccentric uncle Satoru offers her a room above the Morisaki Bookshop, the cramped secondhand store he runs in Jimbocho, Tokyo's storied district of used bookshops.
Surrounded by towering stacks of yellowing novels she has never bothered to read, Takako slowly comes back to life. She discovers the pleasure of books, the rhythms of the neighborhood, and the quiet kindness of her uncle and the regulars who drift through his shop. As she heals, she finds herself drawn into Satoru's own unfinished story—and the return of the wife who left him years ago.
An international bestseller translated from the Japanese, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop is a gentle, warm-hearted novel about heartbreak, second chances, and the way the right book—and the right place—can help a person begin again.
A heartbroken young woman who moves above her uncle's secondhand bookshop and slowly comes back to life.
Takako's eccentric uncle, who runs the second-hand Morisaki Bookshop in Jimbocho and offers her the room above it.
Satoru's wife, who left him years earlier and returns to the bookshop.
Yes. It is the first book in the Morisaki Bookshop series. Satoshi Yagisawa followed it with a sequel, published in Japan in 2011 as 続・森崎書店の日々 and in Eric Ozawa's English translation as More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop. Days at the Morisaki Bookshop tells a complete story on its own, so it can be read by itself, but the sequel continues Takako's story and that of the shop.
Yes. A Japanese live-action film adaptation, 森崎書店の日々 (Morisaki Shoten no Hibi), was directed by Asako Hyuga and released theatrically in Japan on 23 October 2010, with Akiko Kikuchi as Takako. It keeps the novel's quiet, unhurried tone and was shot in the real Jimbocho second-hand book district where the story is set.